Winter in LA 2012

 

Sorry for the radio silence for the last few weeks but for a short period of time I escaped the Pacific NW weather to LA where I was promptly deposited into a windstorm, but for the rest of the trip the weather stayed relatively decent.

 Took a lot of pictures of my grandmas adorable Chihuahua Bobby.

I didn't take so many pictures this time around, a lot of places I went didn't allow photos including the FIDM Museum (sorry Maura) I even tried taking sneaky non-flash pictures but I was denied. I also met a friend of my mom and grandmother who took a liking to me and invited me to a special showing of her museum quality collection of vintage costume jewelry. She fed us lunch and taught us about her collection, it was awesome! But I also couldn't take pictures.

We had about 16 people in the condo for the Girls Only Party.

Some of the girls. I wore my new Christmas dress to this party which I had actually only finished the night before. Didn't get any really good pictures though, it was kinda dark, but you can see the top in the first picture.

My cousin Claire and her mom (my aunt) Jill.

My mom took me to a sample sale in the basement of the California Mart, this was a display in one the of the store windows. Stunning right?

Also I dyed my hair a really dark blue, it's pretty hard to photograph, I love it so much.

One more super cute photo of Bobby.

Holiday French Meal

My boss is super awesome, we talk about all sort of things while we work, one of the things he's had in the planning stages for ages was a French small plates meal, we discussed that there should be, and I let him borrow my French Laundry Cookbook for inspiration and last weekend he finaly got around to doing it.

First Course

 

Mushroom, turnip, carrots, and leaks on a bed of pureed potatos and truffle oil.

Second Course

 French onion soup with crostini and Gruyère cheese.

Third Course

 Pasta with parmersan and goat cheese, snow peas, and toasted pine nuts.

Fourth Course

 Parsley puree with chik'n (vegetarian chicken), on a fried disc of pureed garlic and panko (this was my favorite dish).

Fifth Course

 Lemon sorbet palate cleanser with lime candy and lime slice. The sorbet was store bought, but the candy was homemade.

Sixth Course

 Ratatouille (really good, much better then it looks).

Seventh Course

 Vegetarian Salad Nicoise. My boss is a vegetarian just in case you hadn't guessed that yet.

Eighth Course

Cafe n' Rum Chocolate Mousse with orange liqueur whipped cream. My bosses partner made this course it was super rich I couldn't finish, but I really wanted to.

Ninth Course

Cheese Platter

Tenth Course

 Creme Brulee, my bosses partner also made this in the traditional French way which is a bit runnier then you would normally find, but it was still very good, he used raspberry sugar for the crusts.

 Digestive

 80 Proof Brandy (burned going down, and then continued to burn for a long while afterwards).

Cafe O' Lait (well not yet, I haven't added the warm cream or sugar yet).

The whole meal took about 2.5 hours and then we continued chatting until about midnight before I finally went home, it was sooo good, but I'm sure just exhausting for Ahmad and Jason who spent all day making it. I'm glad I got to be there.

James 1st Birthday

Rose returned from Texas for a short while to be a bridesmaid for our friend Christas wedding. She took the opportunity to celebrate her sons birthday with friends while she was here. James cake looks a little bit like a Cake Wreck doesn't it? But wait...

It's a freaking volcano!

In fact the whole food table was dinosaur themed with blue ranch dip, a mountain of sandwiches, lava cupcakes, strawberry trees dipped in green sugar.

Mmmmm Lava!

Rockin' the dino hats! Gloria wears her hat weirdly.

Shannon is embarrassed.

Rose and Jamil, James is an angry boy.

A few minutes later though he's is rockin' out! Sort of Go go movements, interesting dance choice buddy.

Rose and Kenna

It was really great to be able to celebrate James birthday with everyone. Have an awesome year kiddo!

Evening Tea Party

I've been thinking about an outdoor night time tea party since winter and about a month ago I started putting my thoughts into action.

I'm a bit of a girl scout when it comes to planning stuff. I always want to make sure I have everything I'm ever going to need. I bought citronella candels, baby wipes, a butane powered camping stove to heat the water in. In fact everything you seen in the above picture I brought with me. Although my camping stove is excluded since I wanted to keep it away from stuff it might set on fire.

Teacups all in a nice little row, and you can see my giant basket of teas to the left. There's organic sugar, half and half, and two different types of honey to put in the tea. Under the big foil lumps are mountains of cucumber sandwiches.

I bought Adagios loose leaf tea bags and showed everyone how to use them, they're great for creating blends.

Drinking tea from my favorite cup, Cimorene.

Box O' Sweets the top layer was filled with Almond White Chocolate meringue, then tootsie pops, and my own hand made sweetener spoons.

The spoons were super cute and worked better then I expected.

Mike and Becky, and Glorias coworker Jess were among the first to arrive.

Missy and Stean brought their dog Finn, so cute!

Totem pole!

Seth and Miriam dressed kind of Hysteric Victorian.

I like random table shots I have a ton of these actually, this was just my favorite cause Jess looks so haughty in the background.

Kitty, who I haven't seen in forever since she's been away at college, and Nate.

Nates adorable sister Emily.

After cleaning up a group of us hung out at Gloria and Shannons apartment for some down time. After about an hour most people split but Randall, Shannon, and I headed for the Hawthorne Food Carts, which are open till 3 am.

Roses Going Away Party

Oh my goodness this was a bit of a nightmare for me, not the party itself but getting it ready for you see Heather and Rose should have been planning this thing. Unfortunately there was no communication between the two, so the night before the party I called Rose to ask what was going on and she didn't know. Normally I would say the fault lay with Rose since she hasn't been good at calling me back lately, but I called Heather three times that evening and she NEVER called me back. And I know she wasn't incommunicado since she was texting Randall just fine.

Real quick I asked Rose where she wanted to eat, made reservations, and tried to get in contact with everyone who even kinda knew Rose. It was super last minute so most people had previous engagements, but I managed to get together a pretty good group and we all met at Marrakesh a Moroccan Restaurant on 21st St.

Katherine and I sat on stools, it really wasn't very comfortable after a long day of teaching kids CPR. I can see if you had been raised that way you might be used to it, but after three hours my back was killing me.

There was sword fighting.

Love this picture!

Belly dancing.

Soup noshing.

And many other random things. We had like 8 courses, Moroccan food isn't bad, it's maybe too sweet for me, I defiantly prefer Indian food which is the mother cuisine of Morocco.

Example 1 B'stilla Royale, ground chicken, almonds, and egg wrapped in phyllo dough. Which would be very good. However this recipe is traditionally served dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Sweet and savory together is again not bad, let me reiterate, this was a tasty dish. But I still like other things better.

The devastation, oh the vast emptiness!

Marrakesh is pretty good, the food is tasty, and if you like most Indian food but not the spice Moroccan is defiantly for you. They'll give you silverware if you ask for it, although the service becomes terrible when it starts getting busy, but it's honestly not the waitress fault if the company doesn't hire enough help.

Rose is in Texas now, I'm gonna miss her terribly I hope she stays in contact but with a baby to take care of it's hard to complain if she doesn't. I wish her all the best and the hopes of finding some decent ramen in the lone star state.